Ukraine strikes Yandex data centers in Russia, disrupting services and sparking debate over bot farm claims

Ukrainian drones struck three Yandex data centers in Sasovo, Kaluga, and Vladimir over four days beginning October 7, 2026, forcing the Russian tech giant to suspend operations at multiple sites. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy claimed the strikes reduced bot activity on social media, a claim that spread widely online but was subsequently disputed by disinformation researchers. Cloudflare data confirmed a collapse in automated web traffic from Yandex's network, but experts said this reflected web crawlers, not political troll operations.